My GRUB setup doesn't seem to respond to the vga=791 or vga=769 commands. I have GRUB ver 0.94

I have "vga=791" in my menu.lst, but actually when you type "c" and go into grub commandline mode, it is not listed as a valid command.

For example "color" setting, it behaves normally both in cmdline and the menu.lst.

On the other hand, "foreground" and "background" _are_ mentioned in the cmdline help, but they don't seem to perform either.

The "vbeprobe" and "vbetest" commands to process OK, alhtough the screen of flashing, similarly colored bars I get, amount to a pretty poor video test if you ask me. They tell me I could have my video right _or_ wrong. Ha!

Don't know if any GRUB experts can offer some advice, because it was for these extras that I converted from LILO in the first place.

"vga=791" is an option you pass to the kernel, so it does not have anything with the bootloader per se. With Lilo you could use append="vga=791" while you would put the same option on the kernel line with Grub. Your kernel must be configured to support high-resolution framebuffer. The most stable driver seems to be the generic VESA driver for most video cards (I use it successfully for my Nvidia GeForce2, ATI Radeon 9600XT and Neomagic 256AV cards while the other card I use a specialized driver with is my Matrox Millenium I). The vga option is provided by the VESA or VGA drivers, drivers such as matroxfb uses another mode naming scheme.

The color in Grub settings applies to how the menu should be displayed, not the console itself.


Håkan

Hi Håkan,

Thanks for the quick reply.

I take your point about the kernel's graphic settings, but my aim at the moment is to sort out the GRUB environment,

Yes, I see now how vga=791 is merely passed to the kernel, and that (might/should) explain why it's not listed in GRUB help.

You're right to emphasise how the color commadn affects the menu and not the screen as a whole. It also affects the command line itself.

Right, but still I get a screwed up splashimage, when I define a xpm.gz image (under 14 colours, 640x480). Also,,have you seen that effect with vbetest before? What are you meant to get when you test the video in GRUB?

It would seem that GRUB falls victim to what the BIOS says the video is. This could all very easily be the BIOS fault, which is a pain, 'cos I have no options to change video modes in my BIOS setup.